Appleyards and Cayugas

Cayuga duck. They lay black eggs. 

My title for this post includes, for the unfamiliar, 2 varieties of duck, but time enough for ducks further down the post.

Laura's legacy. Our ground is as neat as manicured parkland.

At the time of last writing, I was about to post our wonderful Help-X volunteer, Laura-D, onto a train at Castlerea station, bound for Kilkenny. Kilkenny is a lot further south in Ireland than here, and Laura's last few weeks were going to be spent in that part of the Island, doing a week's work in Kilkenny, then one in Cork and one in Tralee (Co. Kerry).

I don't mind admitting I was sad to see her go. She is a lovely person and brightened up the place as nicely as the heatwave she brought with her. We both wish her all the best in her future weeks, we hope she finds nice friendly people 'down south' (I'm sure she will) and she knows she is welcome back here any time, working or not.

Figs this year? It is a very young tree.

I have had a couple of texts since, saying that she was delighted to have found a direct bus from Tullamore to Kilkenny, that she was a bit sad over the weekend to have left us, to say that she thought of us as she was given a mower for her first job Monday in Kilkenny and that, no, she had not yet tried porridge (!)

Normal for here. 2 geese gone broody in the same nest. 

With no Laura and with Elizabeth away house-sitting for Mum, I was back on my own but with a healthy list of 'just jobs' to catch up on in the garden. I had a rake of stuff to re-pot and move on (cherry tomatoes, chervil, salad onions, basil, night scented stocks and shasta daisies, fennel and horse radish).

I had to 'coppice' out an ash which I'd planted too close to neighbouring chestnuts and oak and a 'Golden Hornet' crab apple which had been badly ring-barked by the geese. This tree had struggled on with its main trunk for a couple of years but never got enough water aloft to give it proper expansion of leaves (or much fruit), but had then shot out a back-up 2nd 'trunk' from low down. I have now cut the old tree down at 3' high and used the old trunk as a tree-stake for the new whip. Should work. Elizabeth's rescued peach tree is currently doing the same, so may get the same 'repair'.

Breakfast does not come with fewer food-miles than this.
Our own eggs and our home grown, home cured bacon.

The sunshine had brought the local silagers out but I was delighted to get a text from a friend locally who had managed to make hay. Now THAT would not be at all common here-abouts, as the correct grass stage (full grown but not over-grown) rarely coincides with a reliable 7 days of sunshine, so fair play to our friend for managing to make 400 bales of good, fresh green hay. More important, fair play to him for texting me to see if I would like some. Yes please! 5 bales.

Golden Hornet crab apple cut down and
re-started from a low down 'coppice' shoot.

He tells me that he put the hay up on "the Internet" for sale but the word went round the village so fast that he sold it all in a couple of hours and had to take the web-ad down again un-used. Then, cherry on the cake, while he was delivering my hay he asked did I know anyone who might want some young ducks.

Landing the new Appleyard family.

Readers will know that we are exactly those people, so the next day saw me round at his place with the dog-crate collecting a Mum-duck of the 'Appleyard' variety, plus 5 half grown but well feathered ducklings. Appleyards look very much like the wild mallards from which they are derived - green head, narrow white collar, purple chest for the boys, flecky brown 'camo' for the lasses. However, they do come in a range of bred colours right down to 'silver' (aka white!).

The grass is a bit too long for ducks in the Hubbard pen but
they will surely sort it out. 

The only sensible place I could think of to 'land' these newbies, was our old "Hubbard pen", scene of several rearings of the meat-chickens we have done in the past. The grass was very long in there and, unbeknownst to me, down among the brambles at the back, there was a hole in the fence, but in they went and promptly vanished into the forest of grass and new trees. They (especially Mum) are a bit wild and have not been handled at all so they tend to sprint for cover as soon as a person appears.

Mum duck is in there somewhere, watching me warily.

This is not usually a problem and we always allow a good bit of settling down time but on this occasion I needed, that evening, to persuade them back out of the long grass and into the fox-proof house. I set up a series of fence panels as a 'duck-blind' to guide them in. It nearly worked. The five babies went into the house as good as gold, but Mumma at the last minute took a left turn and vanished into the long grass UNDER the house. She then (horror of horrors!) reappeared outside the pen. She had found the hole I did not know was there.

'Shtumpy' teaching her 4 baby chicks to dust-bathe. The chicks
are close in to her chest here, not clearly visible. 

There followed 3 hours of trying to coax her home with half a dozen near misses. Every time she tried to come back she would quack to the babies, who would set up loud 'peep'-ing from the box, but she could not work out that she needed to go ROUND the fencing to get back in. Eventually I managed to corner her and grab her as she frantically tried to squeeze through the chicken-wire.

7 turkey eggs currently being brooded in a corner of the Tígín
but by a hen. She has nipped off for a toilet break. 

She was "home" and re-united with her children but I was definitely the Bogey-man. I had stolen her from her home using a dog crate, given her her first car-ride, dumped her in a grassy forest and then, several hours later, chased her back out, split her from her babies for 3 hours of run-around. Then finally I had unceremoniously grabbed her and man-handled her into this new, unfamiliar house through the roof. It may take her a while to learn to love me! You will be delighted to know that there was no repeat of this drama tonight. I set up my 'duck-blind' more carefully and the family shot into their house in seconds. No wrong turns or escapes tonight.

The bees are very busy in this hot weather. Ignore the ash seed.
It has just fallen from the tree above and landed there. 

While I'm on ducks, as well as these Appleyards, I had put the word out with our friend and ace stock wrangler, now back from Dublin, living at home and starting to accumulate stock, Charlotte. She currently has ducks, both Muscovy and the black variety Cayuga, which lays black eggs. She is hatching some of both varieties and will have some for me shortly. More on these when they arrive.

Of Mighty Trees and Hungry Lambs

Three mighty Black Spruce trees loom over the
 house but perhaps not for long. 

In our front lawn stand 3 mighty trees, black spruces more than 60 years old (maybe even 100) which are, we estimate at least 60 feet high and a good six feet round the trunks at chest-height. Regular readers will know that we have many such trees but these three are 'special' because they are due SSW from the house (right in the line of the most common named-storm winds) and are only about 35 feet from the house. Also because we could "easily" get them down without needing to miss overhead wires, fences, buildings, the drive and so on, They would fall right across the blank lawn. My picture is taken so that there is no tricky perspective - the trees and the house are equi-distant from the camera. If these trees blew down they really would smack the house with BIG pieces of trunk and big side branches.

Ebony and Ivory at a week old.

Most of the time, we are happy that the trees are well glued to the ground and would probably go another hundred years with no problem. We have even been advised of this by our friend Aerial-Keith, who came and de-limbed a tree for us a while back. But those named storms come rocking through and the tops  of these guys are whipping about, you can see that massive thickness of trunk arching and you can feel the shudders through the trunk at ground level and you know it has been raining solidly for months. Then you get to remembering the 'hurricane' which hit SE England in 1987 and the scene of devastation which greeted us that morning, the roads blocked with trees and villages like Three Oaks and towns like Sevenoaks wondering if they'd need a new name and you don't feel quite so safe and serene.

You can imagine that felling them would need to be done by a pro with big machinery and insurance - it is hardly a DIY job for me with my weeny 16 inch cut chain saw - and not cheap. We have been avoiding doing anything about the trees so far but step forward a generous benefactor with an offer of possible help. Thank you GB, you know who you are. Also step forward a likely 'pro' who we spotted doing just such a task for a near neighbour and who I asked same for contact details of. I have now got this fella coming round to look at the job and quote me a price. The job will include slicing up those trunks into 16" thick rounds which I can split for 'logs', and the shredding of all the trash (sneddings). We can use the shredded stuff on the garden. I can cut up the small stuff (branches and tops of trunks) myself. Watch this space and listen out for shouts of 'Timberrrrrr!!!!!!'

Whose is that zippy looking red buzz bomb of a hot hatch-back
parked out front.? That'll be the Mum in Law come to stay!

While thinking about these entertainments, we have been playing host to Mum-in-Law, 'Steak Lady' currently gadding about in a very pretty red buzz-bomb, a tweaked up shiny Skoda hatch-back. She came for 5 days (4 nights) and enjoyed a good old show around of this place and some 'farming', plus some trips to local attractions, a bit of shopping and, of course our own home-grown food and a few drinks. We all thoroughly enjoyed it and we were quite sorry to fill the lady with an excellent breakfast (goose-egg omelettes with ham and cheese), set up her sat-nav and bid her adieu.

The trailer gets some more abuse. It just takes 15 bales with the
'top down'. Here, straw for a neighbour. 

Among the 'farming' we laid on for her were chances to join me on my feed rounds, to round up the various stock at 'bedtime' and a visit to the Roscommon Poultry Sale on Sunday morning where we were looking for Muscovy ducks. No ducks, unfortunately (only a few rather sad looking Khaki Campbell drakes) so Liz got tempted by a dozen Khaki-Campbell 'hatching eggs' which are now in Sue and Rob's incubator. We may yet be in the duck game in 28 days or so. More on this when things happen. She also got involved with bottle feeding our lamb.

Lucy gets a first dose in the dark of Sunday night.

"Bottle feeding?" I hear you exclaim, "Why so?" Long story, but if you have the patience, read on. We had been worried for a few days that our problem-child, 'Lily' to whom we have had the vet a couple of times now seemed to be only milking out of one teat and we had only seen the bigger of her twins, Rosie, doing any suckling. The weaker of the two (Lucy) seemed to be struggling and we had seen her standing with back arched; which we thought (from last year) might be another unformed anus problem, her straining unsuccessfully to poo.

Liz and Lucy getting a bit more professional by Monday morning

However she had the required orifice and was pooing OK so we looked further (Google is your friend!) and found that she was actually standing the the classic "hungry lamb" position, back arched, knees almost touching elbows and all 4 legs and feet almost together (see pic). We sought advice from our experts (Charlotte and Carolyn!) and realised that we needed to rapidly become competent in supplementary feeding - bottle feeding!. This, though, was Sunday evening so we had to find a DIY solution. Liz found a reasonable sounding mix of cow milk and beaten egg on the internet and (oh so luckily!) Charlotte remembered that among her 'stuff' being stored in our spare room while they move house, would be a box labelled "Charlotte's bits and bobs". This might contain the one lamb-sized bottle-teat which she had kept as a souvenir from her own teenager sheep/lamb rearing days.

Lucy in what we now know is classic 'hungry lamb' stance,
elbows and knees almost touching, back arched and tail
pulled in tight between the legs. 

A bit of 'bucket chemistry', the teat successfully located and a washed out beer bottle and we were away. Out in the dark by head-torch we managed to find the lamb and then get the teat into her mouth, all be it, getting her face and front and Liz's gloves and coat liberally sprayed with milk in the process. We really felt like beginners and were worried that we'd not be able to help the girl because of our incompetence. Lucy was trying her hardest to co-operate though and we soon had her suckling away and got a half inch or so of bottle-depth into her.

Lucy's breakfast, dinner and tea for a few weeks. 

We have got a lot more proficient since then and on Monday morning we were able to get hold of some proper lamb-milk (Lamlac) formula and some better sized teats. We are now getting decent quantities of the warm goodness into her , though nowhere near the 1 litre a day you'd do if that was her ONLY food. We suspect that it is not - she is also starting to wean now (3 weeks old) so we see her grazing and stealing some of the adults' 'crunch' mix, plus she may be getting some milk from Mum and also from 'Aunt' Myfanwy. The Lamlac milk, though, has quickly started to put some weight on her and we both think she is plumper, warmer to hold, more lively and a lot less 'hunched up' looking. It is 8 pm as I write this, so I have actually just been out to do the last feed (today) and she was going well even when interupted by her sister (Rosie) who was curious at all these shlurrrping noises and wanted to try out this new thing. We have the vet called to Lily, obviously, as she may have mastitis or some other problem which is causing the milk not to flow from her left side. More on all this as things develop.

In through the side of the mouth seems to do the trick!

On the archery story, I have been down now to my first beginner-training session and I am bubbling over to anyone who will listen at how enjoyable and good it was. The coach, 'Con', is by way of being a former army weapons trainer (among other things) so I guess I should have expected my Silverwood's taster-session technique to be completely trashed so that I could start again with better foundation but I thoroughly enjoyed the process. There are 3 of us beginners but, by chance, my 2 colleagues were unable to come that day, so I enjoyed some one-to-one tuition.

The Mum in Law gives the bottle feeding a try.
I ask "Is this the first time you have fed a lamb?"
She says "It's the first time I've been near
enough to one to touch it!"

Con started by barring my Crocs (shoes) from future sessions and went on from there, changing my 'sidedness' ( I now shoot holding the bow in my  left hand and drawing the string with my right even though I am left-eye dominant), and then ripping into my stance (hips, belly, head, you name it) but in a good way. This was not a 'boot camp' and he kept saying "hope you don't mind a good slagging!" so that we both had a good laugh about it. He was impressed by my consistency, however, so that my groupings of arrows were good and tight throughout. When I do it wrong, at least I do it wrong the same every time, which, apparently, makes me a lot easier to work on.

Not one of ours - I just love Herefords!

That's about enough for this rather long and rambling post but I will just close with the fact that as well as the duck eggs sitting in Sue's big incubator over at her place, I have set 13 chicken eggs (mainly pure bred Buff Orpington) in the little incubator we borrow each year from the currently away-at-college Charlotte (Thanks, C!). This was going to happen anyway but we did it today so that Mum in Law could see the start of the thing. She may come back in 21 days hopeful to see some hatching. That City Girl is definitely starting to get 'infected' with all the goats, lambs, geese and other birdies.